When winter is late: News from FROST in Cambridge Bay

Last November, a team from the international research consortium FROST, led by Milla Rautio at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, returned from Cambridge Bay in the Canadian Arctic… with the observation that winter had not yet arrived.

It’s an unusual season, a late autumn. The formation of the ice cover is nearly three weeks behind schedule. There’s no snow yet either, but this absence allows us to admire perfectly transparent ice, says Milla Rautio.

It was a surprising situation, which the team managed to turn into a moment of enjoyment by skating on the sampling lake. But in the field, the lack of snow complicated logistics: since the team couldn’t travel by snowmobile, they had to move around by quad, which was much slower.

Understanding Changing Winters

Funded since 2024 by NordForsk and the New Frontiers in Research Fund, the FROST project aims to better understand how warming winters are transforming Arctic lakes. To achieve this, the team relies on dialogue between Indigenous knowledge, natural sciences, and social sciences.

The group brings together 17 researchers from Canada, the United States, and Nordic countries. Together, they study changes in lake ice, fish health, and community well-being, in order to support adaptation strategies rooted in local realities.

A Circumpolar Perspective

In close partnership with Inuit and Sámi communities, FROST is conducting a large-scale comparison across 12 sites throughout the Arctic, including Cambridge Bay. One of the project’s major innovations: winter sampling.

Although winter lasts up to nine months each year in the North, most scientific studies have traditionally been carried out… in summer. A reality that does not reflect the daily lives of northern communities. FROST is ready to take on the challenge.

On the field (even when it’s cold!)

At Cambridge Bay, Milla Rautio was accompanied by her students Sara Masure and Félix Lauzon to monitor Lakes Pelly (69.206386°N, 104.749800°W), Greiner (69.176793°N, 104.93361°W), and Inhuktok (69.234622°N, 104.757787°W): sampling water, plankton, aquatic insects, and fish. Meanwhile, a Finnish team was working at Kilpisjärvi and Muddusjärvi, within the traditional Sámi territory (Sápmi), while another team in Sweden was preparing to head to Abisko.

Do winters change in the same way everywhere north of the 60th parallel?

That is one of the major questions FROST is striving to answer… in the very heart of winter.

Text by Marie-Christine Lafrenière, Communications Officer for FROST